Sort by the document, not by the diagnosis
Almost everyone arriving here has a piece of paper. It might be a notice from an insurer, a letter from a mortgage servicer, or a claim decision. That document is more useful than any description of the problem, because it fixes two things at once: how long you have, and who you are actually dealing with.
| What you are holding | What it usually means | Where to go |
|---|---|---|
| A cancellation notice, mid-term | The insurer is ending the policy before its expiry date, rather than declining to offer new terms at expiry. Which one you are holding decides which page applies and which notice period governs — the periods themselves are state law and are cited on the linked pages | Canceled for non-payment · Canceled or non-renewed generally |
| A non-renewal notice | The policy runs to its expiry date and is not offered again. This is not a cancellation and the rules are different — a distinction that matters more than almost anything else on this site | Dropped by your insurer · State Farm specifically |
| A notice naming the roof | Roof age and condition are, on our reading rather than any published finding, the most common property-condition reason given on a non-renewal notice, and the answer depends on whether the insurer is refusing to cover it at all or moving it to actual cash value | Insuring an older roof · Denied because of roof age |
| A notice naming the wiring or the panel | Knob-and-tube, aluminum branch circuits and certain panel brands. What the underwriter believes and what the Consumer Product Safety Commission's own record says are frequently not the same | Canceled over old wiring |
| A notice naming your dog | Six states now restrict this by statute, and the drafting differs enough between them that the answer genuinely turns on which state you are in | Dropped over a dog breed |
| A letter referring to a photograph of your property | Aerial and satellite imagery review. The image is usually months old and the finding is usually contestable | Dropped after an aerial photo |
| A demand from your mortgage servicer | The servicer says the policy does not meet requirements. The published requirements are short and quotable, and the first question is which document the demand actually comes from | Lender rejected your policy · Force-placed insurance |
| A claim denial | Water damage denials turn on a distinction between sudden and gradual that is written into the policy form itself | Water damage claim denied · What a claim does to your record |
| A notice from a named carrier in a state you have read about | Two of the largest carriers in the hardest market are covered individually, because what the press reported and what the underlying settlement or order actually says are different in both cases | State Farm non-renewals · Farmers in California |
| Declinations — nobody will quote you | Work the ladder in order: the standard market, then non-standard admitted carriers, then surplus lines, and the state's last-resort plan only at the end. Skipping to the residual plan costs coverage and regulator protections you still had | Nobody will insure the house · State FAIR Plans |
| A quote that is far higher than expected, with no notice | Often a loss-history report you have never seen. You can request a free copy once every 12 months — and a further free copy within 60 days of any declination, cancellation or increase in what you are charged | Your CLUE report |
| Nothing has happened yet — you are deciding whether to phone and ask | The one entry here that is not a notice. At least seventeen states restrict how an insurer may use a claim inquiry, and they disagree on the question that decides whether the usual advice applies to you: does the protection reach a call about your actual damage, or only a general question about coverage? | Does asking count as a claim? |
If your document is not on that list, the two broadest pages are being dropped by your insurer and not being able to get insured at all. Between them they cover most of what is left.
Before you read anything else: find the date
Every page in this section eventually comes back to a deadline, and the deadline is set by state law rather than by the insurer. We are not going to state a period here, because there is no national answer to state — but the reason to find your date before you do anything else is the same in every state.
| Why it comes first | |
|---|---|
| The notice date starts the clock, not the day you opened it | Periods generally run from the date the notice was mailed or delivered, which is often days before it reached you. Find that date before you do anything else |
| Cancellation and non-renewal run on different clocks | They are governed by different provisions in every state we have read, and a cancellation for non-payment is usually governed by a third. Which one you are holding decides which rule applies — the periods are on the linked pages, with the statute |
| Replacing coverage takes longer than people expect | In a tightened market an application can take weeks, and a declination can take days to arrive. Working backwards from the notice date is the only way to know whether you have room |
| A lapse is the one outcome to avoid | An uninsured period is what triggers force-placed coverage, which protects the lender rather than you. Whatever else is unresolved, do not let the policy lapse while you argue about it |
Dropped, denied, or holding a notice you do not understand? Call us. We will read the letter with you, tell you which clock you are on and what your state requires your insurer to do — then put you in touch with a licensed agent who can quote you and write the policy.
Call (866) 754-7910Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm ET (6am to 2pm PT). We are not an insurance agency and we do not sell policies. Call and we will help you make sense of what you have been sent — then put you in touch with a licensed agent — the one person who can actually quote you and write a policy. We hold no insurance license, so we cannot quote you, recommend an insurer, or advise you on your own policy.What this site is, and what it is not
We are a publisher, not an insurance agency. Nothing here is a quote, an offer, or advice about your particular policy, and we do not sell insurance. The telephone number on this site reaches us, not an insurance agency, and we hold no license to sell or advise on your coverage; the arrangement we intend to run is set out on our how we make money page in plain terms.
What we do is read the underlying documents. Where a page says a statute requires something, it quotes the statute and names the subsection. Where a regulator's press release describes an order more broadly than the order does, we follow the order and say so. Where a search comes up empty, we say what we searched for and where. Our methodology sets out how that works, and our corrections page lists what we have gotten wrong — including several occasions where a correction was itself wrong and had to be corrected again.
The background pages
Several problems above turn on the same few pieces of policy mechanics. Rather than explaining them badly ten times, they are explained once, here.
| If the question is | Read |
|---|---|
| What the policy will actually pay — and why an older roof is treated differently | Actual cash value versus replacement cost |
| Whether the dwelling limit is right | How much dwelling coverage you need |
| What all the letters and numbers on the policy mean | Reading your declarations page |
| What a last-resort policy does and does not cover | State FAIR Plans |
| Whether a wind mitigation inspection is worth doing | Wind mitigation inspections |
| Which policy form you have, and whether it matters | HO-3 versus HO-5 |
Corrections to this page (7)
We publish these rather than editing quietly. Our corrections policy explains how we handle errors.
- — Two sentences on this page said we are paid for connecting calls, in the present tense — one of them in an FAQ, which search engines read as structured data. At that time there was no phone number on this site, no agency behind it and no revenue of any kind. The footer of this same page said so at the same time, which means we published two mutually exclusive compensation disclosures on one page. On a money-and-health site the compensation disclosure is the one statement a reader has to be able to rely on.
- — Our summary of the page on being unable to get insured told readers the route out usually runs through the residual market. That page's organizing idea is a four-rung ladder in which the state's last-resort plan is the LAST rung, worth reaching only after non-standard admitted carriers and surplus lines are exhausted — because the rungs above it keep regulator protections the plan does not. We routed readers past the two rungs that protect them. Seventeen states have no residual plan at all.
- — A row said you can request a free loss-history report once every 12 months and stopped there, on a row whose trigger is a quote far higher than expected. That is an adverse action, which entitles you to a further free copy within 60 days. A reader who had used their annual copy was told to pay for the report that explains their quote.
- — We said at least fourteen states restrict the use of a claim inquiry. Our own page on the subject says seventeen, and narrates finding the last three. The hub was frozen at a superseded count, telling readers in four states they had no protection.
- — We said several states require a specific reason on a non-renewal notice. The page we link to for that says in terms that it has not surveyed which states impose the duty and will not imply otherwise. The hub converted an explicitly unsurveyed question into a finding.
- — We stated as fact that roof age is the most common property-condition reason given on a non-renewal notice. The page that ranking comes from labels it our characterization rather than a published finding. Stripping the label promoted our own guess to a fact.
- — This page said the problems section holds thirteen pages. It holds sixteen, and the triage table on this page links all sixteen — so the count was falsified by the table beneath it, in the rendered methodology and in the file the next editor opens first.
How we researched this
This page is a routing page and keeps its own assertions to a minimum. It is a routing page, and every deadline, statute, figure and quotation it gestures at is carried by the page it links to, where it is cited and dated. That is deliberate: a hub that adds its own unaudited assertions gets the worst of both worlds, since it is the page most likely to be read quickly and the least likely to be checked.
Why it exists. A gate check added on 24 August 2026 found six pages on this site with no inbound link from the body of any other page. They were the six most recently built and most heavily fact-checked pages we had. A section with sixteen pages and no hub is not a section; it is sixteen files that happen to share a URL prefix, and neither a reader nor a crawler can see how they relate. This page is the fix — and to be exact about what the check does, because an audit caught us overstating it: 2.25 fails when a page has no inbound body link from anywhere on the site. It has no concept of hub membership, so it would not catch a sibling missing from the table above if some other page happened to link to it. On the day this page was written, one was missing, and 2.25 passed clean.
No deadlines are stated here. Notice periods are state law, they differ by state and by reason, and stating a national figure would be wrong everywhere. The pages that state a period quote the statute and name the subsection.
What we could not find
This page makes 1 claim that something does not exist. That is the one kind of claim you cannot check by following a link, because there is no document to link to — so here is the search behind each one, and what we opened. Not finding something is not a finding. If you know of a source we missed, our corrections policy says how to tell us.
“there is no national answer to state”
Where we looked 24 August 2026.
- Searched for a federal statute or regulation setting a homeowners insurance cancellation or non-renewal notice period
- Searched separately for an NAIC MODEL that has been adopted uniformly enough to function as a national period, and for any national compilation giving one figure
What we actually opened
- Insurance is regulated at state level under the McCarran-Ferguson Act; no federal notice period for homeowners cancellation or non-renewal was located
- NAIC publishes models, not binding national law, and states adopt them with variations — the periods on this site's own state-specific pages differ from each other, which is the practical demonstration
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between cancellation and non-renewal?
A cancellation ends the policy before its expiry date. A non-renewal lets it run to expiry and then does not offer new terms. The grounds for mid-term cancellation are narrow in most states — typically non-payment, material misrepresentation, or a substantial change in the risk — while non-renewal is generally a business decision the insurer is entitled to make. The notice periods differ too. Which one you are holding determines almost everything else, so it is worth checking the wording rather than assuming.
Do I have to do anything before the notice period runs out?
Getting replacement coverage in place before the current policy ends is the thing that matters most, because an uninsured gap brings in force-placed coverage through your mortgage. Disputing the reason and shopping for a replacement are not alternatives — they run in parallel, and the shopping is the one with the deadline.
The notice just says 'underwriting reasons'. Is that allowed?
It depends on the state and on whether it is a cancellation or a non-renewal. Whether a specific reason must be stated is set state by state, and we have not surveyed which states require it — so do not assume you are entitled to one. Asking in writing for the underwriting finding behind it is a reasonable step in any state. The relevant page for your situation above sets out what is required where that has been established.
Is this site an insurance company?
No. We publish; we do not sell insurance, and nothing here is a quote or an offer of coverage. The telephone number on this site reaches us rather than an insurance agency, and no agency is contracted to it and there is no revenue of any kind today; the model we intend to run is set out in full on our how we make money page. We do not collect your details on this site and there is no form on any page of it.
How current is this?
Every page carries the date it was last reviewed and the topic or revision date of the documents it quotes, because in this subject a guide without a date is citing a moving target. Where a rule changed during 2026, the pages give both the date the change took effect and the date it appeared in the published guidance, because those are routinely different.